Randell

Can treatment for severe anorexia nervosa be delivered safely in a community setting? According to a recent paper by Calum Munro and colleagues (2014, open access), the answer is yes.

In 2001, a systematic review by Meads, Gold, and Burls found that inpatient treatment is not more or less effective than outpatient treatment for individuals with AN. Of course there will always be patients who will require inpatient care, but given the high cost, lack of clear efficacy, and known risks, it is important to ask if there are better options, particularly for a subgroup of individuals who may not need or may not benefit from inpatient care.

In their paper, Munro et al. describe a program that they’ve developed for treating individuals with severe AN in the community. The program is called the Anorexia Nervosa Intensive Treatment Team (ANITT) service. It is one … Continue reading →

Definitioner

crude mortality rate

an estimate of the rate at which members of a population die during a specified period; the numerator is the number of people dying during the period; the denominator is the size of the population, usually at the middle of the period (mid-year population) (12)

hypothesis

a tentative and testable explanation of the relationship between two (or more) events or variables; often stated as a prediction that a certain outcome will result from specific conditions (4)

cognitive (cognition)

processes of knowing, including attending, remembering, and reasoning; also the content of the processes, such as concepts and memories (4)

mortality

death (2)

schema (schemas)

general conceptual frameworks, or clusters of knowledge, regarding objects, people, and situations; knowledge packages that encode generalizations about the structure of the environment (4)

survey

a method of getting information about a specific behavior, experience, or event by means of interviews or questionnaires (5)

comorbid (co-morbidity)

the presence of one or more diseases or conditions other than those of primary interest (2)